Since 1956, European countries have come together every year to compete in the Eurovision Song Contest, a contest of mainly pop and techno artists that can often seem like a parody of European musical tastes. There have long been accusations of bias in the voting process, and last Saturday’s competition — which Sweden won — was no exception. In this episode of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, Galen talks with statistics and health economics professor Gianluca Baio, who created a model to determine if there really are biases favoring or disfavoring certain nations.
Galen also talks with Courtney Kennedy, vice president of methods and innovation at the Pew Research Center, who recently published a study proving that today’s election industry bears little resemblance to the turn-of-the-century election industry. Gone are the days of actual human beings randomly dialing landlines, but what does that mean for the accuracy of public opinion research?
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